Air bags are often fitted to vehicles as a safety measure: an air bag is designed to inflate extremely rapidly, if triggered by a sufficiently serious impact, to cushion and protect an occupant from life-threatening injury.
The vehicle manufacturing industry has been fitting air bags to vehicles for several years. Usually, an air bag fitted on the driver's side of the vehicle is inserted in the steering wheel. Air bags may also be located elsewhere, for example, in the fascia in front of the front seat passenger, in door panels, in vehicle seats or backrests and in roof panels.
In an effort to prevent tampering with air bags, security screws are normally used to affix air bags and/or their covers in the vehicle. Unfortunately, air bag theft has become one of the fastest-growing automobile crimes, so it is apparent that security screws are inadequate. Most security screws have six-pointed star-shaped heads and require a special screwdriver to remove them. Once a thief has one of these special screwdrivers, which are available relatively freely, it is a simple task to steal an air bag by disconnecting the vehicle battery and removing up to four screws.
Air bags are also the targets of insurance fraud. Air bags which have not been deployed in an automobile crash may be removed illegally in the repair shop and replaced with a deployed bag. After inspection by an insurance assessor, the original air bag is replaced, and the insurer is billed for a new air bag. Alternately, an undeployed air bag may be pulled out from beneath its cover, so that it seems to have been deployed, then replaced after inspection with a black market air bag.
While there is a need for preventing unauthorised access to air bags, there is a continuing requirement to utilise fasteners which permit rapid assembly of the air bag to the vehicle during vehicle construction.